Whilst ice storms knock off handfuls of people in the Southern US, and bits of the rest are crippled by massive snow storms the Alps remain green, folks flock to the Cote d'Azur for a quick dip and new islands emerge from beneath the retreating ice-caps. Global warming has officially arrived! Bring on that seasonal creep...
2007 is set to be the hottest year on record (something to do with El Niño and cow farts) and given that it was 15c in Paris last week i'd like to lobby for adding the long-armed wooly jumper and five-fingered mitten to the endangered species list.
As I sit here on the 15th floor looking out across the harbour its difficult to make out Kowloon a couple of hundred metres away for the fug in between as I we flew in from Paris I saw first hand one of those brown clouds high up in the atmosphere, chocked full of fossil feuls and various other crap someone somewhere had burnt. Hence my 'better late than never' new years resolution - be as green as possible.
Things got off to a great start. I cut down my shower time to reduce water, unplugged or turned off everything electrical that I didn't need then picked up my bag and ran to the supermarket. In Paris I was buying as many organic and green products as possible, but here its practially impossible. Asia might be a newly awoken tiger when it comes to business but its a beast that doesn't give a shit about the environment it lives in. Recycling is practically unheard of - I got a strange look when I asked where the recycle bins were in the building and the girl at the check out till look positively disgusted when I said I didn't need a plastic bag as i'd brought my daypack. I find it mind boggling that so many people here are infatuated with cleanliness; face masks in the metro, hand sanitisers in every building lobby (sometimes also in the lift); and yet there seems to be so little care for the environment. So, it looks like i'm just going to have to step up my efforts to make up for them. And if a single one of you makes a smart comment about the amount of air travel I do i'll recycle you ;-)
x
1 comment:
Hehe, that would make me a hypocrite anyway so I'm keeping stum. Though I'm shocked to learn that they don't recycle and I shudder when I hear people say it's too much hassle. The british are so flipping lazy! Paris sounded lovely. I just posted a quick something on my blog so hopefully you will hear from me regularly now
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